


you know what they say when you assume

by andawaywego



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: And Lots of Other Nonsense, Crack, F/F, Get Prank'd, Henry being a Punk, Miscommunication, Snow being a Crazy Mom, Some Captain Swan, and a little angst, mentions of Outlaw Queen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-11 02:20:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10452795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andawaywego/pseuds/andawaywego
Summary: "So her son thought that, when she’d said, “I’m gonna…I’m sort of going to be getting married,” she’d meant she’s marrying Regina.And not, you know, her live-in boyfriend."SQ. Post-6x13 AU nonsense.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i should be working on my other story, but here's this thing.
> 
> it's borderline crack and i'm pretty sure Hook and Robin are way OOC--along with literally everyone else--but it has a happy ending.
> 
> also it's super weird and not even close to plausible, but i just kinda thought y'all needed something happy before tonight as much as i do.

…

_you know what they say when you assume  
_

_.._

Henry is the first one she tells.

It’s fitting, she thinks, because he deserves to know, except he’s in the middle of killing someone in his video game named “skagzilla”—which she’s pretty sure is something she’s yelled at cars that cut her off on the freeway before.

He’s sitting on the couch in her living room and he doesn’t even really look up when she finishes it up by saying, “Well?” because she really wants his thoughts and she’s not above standing in front of the TV so he’ll look at her, even though the last time she did that had gotten his Xbox controller thrown at her.

And Regina had ended up grounding him for her because, Emma?

Not a super great disciplinarian.

But that’s not what’s on trial here.

“Well, what?” Henry asks, and he doesn’t even look up. He just mutters, “ _Shit_ ,” and she makes a face and stands in front of the TV.

Her final hand.

“Ma!” he yells, but he thankfully pauses the game to look at her more fully.

“Are you even listening to me?” she asks and her arms are crossed now.

He looks at her briefly and then cranes his neck to look around her. “Yeah, I heard you.”

But she knows that tactic.

She uses it on her own mother all the time. The difference is, her mom falls for it.

Most of the time.

“Then what did I just say?”

And, honestly, it’s a pretty good Snow imitation. She even does that little eyebrow lift thing.

“You and Mom are getting married,” he says nonchalantly. “Surprise, surprise.”

Okay, so he _was_ listening. Except—

“Wait, Henry—”

But he barrels on. “Am I supposed to be impressed or something? It took you guys almost four years to get it together.”

“Henry, that’s not—”

There’s the sound of gunfire behind her from the TV but he’s looking at her seriously, and not the TV when he says, “Does this mean Hook is moving out?”

.

And, okay.

So her son thought that, when she’d said, “I’m gonna…I’m sort of going to be getting married,” she’d meant she’s marrying Regina.

And not, you know, her live-in boyfriend.

If that makes any sense.

It’s possible that Henry is messing with her. He’s been doing that a lot lately. There was the whole week where he changed her phone so that every time she tried to type “hey” it changed to “hey there sexy mama”.

That had taken Ruby twelve hours to figure out how to fix and Regina hadn’t been able to look at her for more than a couple seconds for a few weeks after she’d sent a message saying something quite like _Hey there sexy mama could you bring me lunch?_ followed by a—totally innocent—winkie face.

She’d been talking about grilled cheese!

Jesus Christ.

And that wasn’t nearly as awkward as when Ruby had texted Snow to see if she’d fixed it and her mother had been flattered and humiliated at the same time. Of course, Snow had been sitting in the booth with them and they’d only texted her to see if it worked, but, “Flattery will get you everywhere, Emma,” is what she’d said and she’d looked on the verge of tears.

Anyway, yeah. Henry could be pranking her.

But she’s too embarrassed for some reason—imagining standing in her front foyer and kissing _Regina_ instead of Killian with that ring on her finger—and she doesn’t stick around to find out.

.

Except it happens with her mother, too.

“Oh, honey,” Snow says. “That is so wonderful!”

And it would be perfect, really, if her mother wasn’t defaulting to that horrible, high-pitched baby voice she gets trapped in whenever she’s holding Neal.

Still, “Really, Mom?”

And it’s exciting. It’s validating. It’s nice to hear that someone else thinks this is a good thing, too.

“Of course!”

From the adjoining room, Emma can hear her dad give a particularly loud, woofing snore that practically shakes the foundation of the entire building. She throws a dirty look in his general direction.

“You know, Mom, that is actually a relief,” Emma hears herself say, her mind on Henry back at home probably laughing at the way she’d fled. “I needed to hear that.”

“Oh, baby,” her voice is still really high and her lips are puckered dramatically so that ‘baby’ sounds more like ‘beh-beh. “You and Regina are perfect together.”

Except—

“If you’d have proposed two years ago, I might have had a coronary, but now?” She’s swinging Neal back and forth and he’s squealing happily and clapping his hands together. “It’s all coming together! Congratulations, Emma.”

And Emma isn’t even sure what the hell is happening.

Is it possible that Henry got to her mom before she could? That he paid her off?

What amount of money would it take for her mother to prank her like this?

Snow spins in a circle in the center of the room making obnoxious airplane noises and she’s still using that stupid baby voice.

“Mom, seriously, please stop with the voice,” Emma sighs and presses her fingertips into her temples.

If Killian had just come with her this wouldn’t have been a problem.

“I can’t, sweetie,” Snow tells her. “The voice is controlling me now.”

And Emma slams the door on her way out.

.

She stomps her way to Granny’s, already thinking of ways to punish Henry. The most obvious would be to just take away his videogame privileges for a week or two.

Or maybe until the wedding.

The real one. Where she’ll marry Killian and not Regina, of course. Because she’s not engaged to Regina.

The next punishment on her list is to spend yet another night just staring at the blank TV for the official run-time of the first _Lord of the Rings_ movie. But she already did that to him last month when she caught him trying to scale the house after sneaking out to see Violet.

She could always go with Snow’s new tried-and-true method of making everyone hold hands for an hour when they so much as raise their voice at one another.

It was funny at first (i.e. Henry tentatively holding onto Killian’s hook after they’d gotten a little too rowdy during a game of family charades that she and Regina had _dominated_ ), but decidedly less funny after she’d called Gold a weasel in the middle of the diner a couple days _after_ that.

Emma briefly wonders if that would work with this Gideon guy, and then nearly forgets to be annoyed when she tries to imagine holding his hand in the back of Gold’s shop, surrounded by everyone else and her still-sleeping father, propped up like _Weekend at Bernie’s._

“Oh, Sheriff!”

As preoccupied as she is imagining it, she’s hardly even noticed that she’s already inside Granny’s, standing by the counter being stared at by the woman in question.

The ring on her finger is beginning to slip a little bit towards her knuckle and she reaches down and shoves it up with her right hand. She mutters an awkward, “Um, hi,” because she can’t recall, in the past four years, the last time that Granny was _this_ excited to see her.

In fact, she’s practically beaming.

“I hear congratulations are in order!” Granny says and Emma grins. “I made you a cake.”

She imagines Killian sitting in here— _not_ Regina, of course, because they’re not engaged—and gushing about their engagement. Because, when you’re excited about something you want to shove it in everyone’s faces and Killian is excited, right?

Right.

She bites her lip a little too hard and yelps.

“Oh, wow,” she says. “Thank you.”

Granny bends below the counter to pull something out and then tugs out a very large cake pan and removes the cover.

And it’s a pretty nice cake.

Emma’s mouth starts watering immediately, her stomach grumbling so loudly that she has half a mind to remind it that it’s _her_ that does the talking these days.

Is that chocolate mousse on the top?

“It’s chocolate mousse buttercream frosting, actually,” Granny says and _crap._

Emma must have said that part out loud.

Also, double _crap_.

“ _Congratulations Emma and Regina_?” she reads in the halved strawberries scattered on the top to spell the message.

“We’re just so excited for you!” Granny coos.

And that cake looks too good to turn down, but, “Who’s _we_?”

Granny gives her a look over her spectacles—just a flicker of the eyes behind where Emma is standing—and apparently _we_ is the entire diner.

Everyone is staring at her with some mixture of awe and pride and she thinks that Kathryn might be crying and smiling in some vaguely horrifying combination from her seat across from her husband.

She’s just glad Ruby isn’t here. She has a knack for—

And, nope. She’s wrong.

Ruby is sliding out from the kitchen with a wolfish grin on her face and mouthing something that Emma thinks might be, “We need to talk,” and _nope._

They sure don’t.

“Thanks,” she says. There’s too many people to get good and properly mad right now and really, she’s just more overwhelmed than anything at the moment. “I should, uh—”

She jerks her thumb at the door she’s already backing up towards. Everyone just watches her, saying nothing and it’s such a far cry from all of them mobbing up with figurative (or possibly _literal_ ) pitchforks and flames to swarm the mayor’s house after the curse first broke.

They actually seem happy at the prospect of her and Regina being hypothetically (and wildly incorrectly) engaged. They seem excited for it.

She’s halfway out the door when she remembers to go back for the cake, and slides it off the counter and into her arms awkwardly before anyone can say anything at all like, “took you long enough,” or, “you’re good for each other!”

She couldn’t handle that right now.

But she can handle this cake.

On the walk to her car, she eats some of the strawberries so that it just says,

_Con ra     tions Em a    eg na!_

She’s gonna kill Henry.

.

She eats half the cake in her car with her hands (like a rat) and just kind of parks on the street outside her house with no intention of going in. Henry is inside there laughing at her, possibly penniless after having paid off the entire town.

Or possibly just a couple of key figures here and there that could play it off as convincing enough.

But she doesn’t want to think about _that_ because if _that’s_ what he did, then it wasn’t a far stretch of the imagination to be told that she and Regina are engaged.

Which they’re not.

Regina doesn’t even like the idea of marriage. She said so that first night they’d spent in the Wish-World together and maybe that had just been a dream because _all of that_ seems a lot like a dream now (except Robin, of course, because _he_ came with them, didn’t he?).

And maybe she’d only said it because Emma had hawked that really dusty bottle of ale off out of that tavern up the road from her parents’ castle and it was _hours_ spent outside in the frigid night air (“Starting a fire would call attention to where we are, Miss Swan. No, I’m afraid, if you get cold, you’ll have to find other means of keeping yourself warm.”).

And, honestly, Emma should be given a freakin’ medal for all the times she hasn’t said, “That’s what she said,” to Regina because, wow. Do moments like that come up often sometimes.

The woman practically bathes in subtle, unconscious innuendo.

But, when she’d said it, she seemed sober enough and apologizing for killing her parents.

 _They were fake, but I am sorry if that was scarring,_ Regina had said and Emma had draped her bright, white cloak across Regina as much as she could so that she was still covered, too.

It was before Robin showed up and that portal closed and everything got screwed up and Emma, always, was ruffled at the close proximity—at Regina’s apparently level-headedness. She was still high on the way she’d said, “Stand back,” like some action hero outside that tavern and climbed up into the tavern through the window and Regina had said, “Honestly, Emma, you didn’t even get us _food_ ,” behind her like she was completely impossible to deal with.

But the grin Regina had been trying to fight when she’d gotten back out was worth it.

 _It’s okay,_ Emma said against the tree, finding the words within herself, _Like you said—they weren’t real._

 _I was going to kill just one of them,_ Regina said—and, honestly, _classic_ Regina to take a slightly horrifying memory and try to make it seem light-hearted. To her credit, though, she hadn’t said anything about Emma’s ‘insipid mother’, and if we’re still giving out medals, that probably has earned Regina one, too.

 _But whoever was left would have probably thrown themselves at me, and then where would we be?_ she continued.

At the time, Emma was trying her luck with the rest of the bottle. This was when she thought they’d be going home the very next afternoon and wasn’t betting on carving a portal out of a tree.

 _Yeah, they do that a lot,_ she’d conceded and alcohol was stronger in the Enchanted Forest. She’s pretty sure still that she hadn’t imagined the buzzing in her fingertips or the twisting in her gut that always made her warm whenever she was on her way to getting truly, blessedly wasted.

 _Marriage does that to you, dear,_ Regina said and she wasn’t looking at Emma when she said it, gazed fixed far and away. _Or, well, good marriages are made of years of self-sacrifice._

And then that little derisive sniffle she does when she’s made a particularly harsh, self-blow.

Emma said something silly that made Regina look at her. Something, _So, you’ll never get married again?_

Something stupid.

Regina’s eyes flashed in a way that made Emma nearly happy to see Robin the next day, before he decided to tag along and her own stupid, traitor mouth told Regina to bring him along.

They were close. Emma is certain she didn’t dream that part up.

(She’s been remembering it often since then, mostly at inopportune moments—the shower in the morning, on that camping trip with Henry, pretty much every time Killian kissed her, etc.)

She hadn’t dreamt up that day outside the mine four years ago either, and she’d been pretty certain they were going to kiss then, _too_ , though neither conversation at the time had been particularly romantic.

Unless unromantic conversations are their thing, which would make them inherently romantic.

All Regina had said was, _Not that I see, Emma, no._

And she must have felt it, too. Her eyes had dipped down to Emma’s mouth and they’d been maybe a couple of inches from _that_ messy mistake when Regina had pulled away and said something about sleeping while Emma kept watch.

But they’d been about to kiss.

Or…

Emma needs to stop thinking about that.

And she needs to stop eating this cake.

She’s marrying Killian. Not Regina.

No matter how many people her son pays off. No matter how many cakes they bake her.

(Though that may be a lie if all of them come with frosting like _this_ )

It’s not as if Regina is going to be getting married again anyway.

Someone knocks on the driver’s side window.

Emma screams so loudly and jumps so much that the rest of the cake ends up in her lap.

.

“Goddamn it, Regina,” she says as she pushes her way out of the car, scraping a huge chunk of that icing off of her coat and onto the pavement.

Regina sidesteps her with a disgusted and amused facial expression (if such a thing is possible, and, with Regina, it always is). “Were you eating an entire chocolate cake in your car? With your hands?” she asks, and it’s probably not the worst thing she’s caught Emma doing in her car—looking at you, Snow-and-Charming-sex-night Incident of two years ago that made it necessary to take a whore bath in the car.

At least.

Not a full one.

Just certain parts.

They still haven’t spoken about that.

“Yes, Regina, I was, and you know why?” Emma asks, the frustration from the day—from Henry and his boundless prank-funding, from Hook disappearing to God-only-knows where _the day after they get engaged_ and not being around to back her up, from her mother and Granny and everyone not believing her, and mostly (or more recently) Regina wearing that stupid red lipstick that makes her want to—

“Because I am getting married to _Killian_ and not you and the cake had your name on it and I needed to eat it off of there and it was delicious!” She pauses. “The cake…not your name, but, I mean- Your name was made out of strawberries, so, of course it was delicious, but so was _my name_! And even if we were getting married, Regina, I would eat the cake anyway because you would probably just complain about it to get a rise out of me and I _love it_ too much for you to do that!”

She’s out of breath when she finished, but, of course, that’s ridiculous.

But Regina doesn’t even seem to notice that.

She’s just staring at Emma with this really blank look on her face and Emma is struck, suddenly, with the realization that she’s seen this look before somewhere.

All those times Henry pulled away from her or that day she’d left Robin at the town line or when they’d been in the Underworld and she’d said, _To be honest, you’re too good for Hook_ , and looked, for all the world like she’d meant it.

More recently, she thinks she saw that look the moment she’d told her to bring Robin back with them.

“You’re getting married?” is what Regina says next and Emma isn’t even surprised to hear the question.

She thinks of finding that ring in Killian’s sea chest because she’d been certain he’d snuck the rest of that box of Thin Mints in there. How she’d expected herself to feel excitement or confusion or anything other than the buzzing thump of fear thudding its way through her veins.

How she’d spent the entire day pacing around the house with that damn ring staring at her from the kitchen counter as she’d tried to figure out what she should say.

How she imagined telling her mother or her father or Henry and how she thought they’d be excited for this new chapter, how her mother would say, _Oh, Emma, this is wonderful,_ and talk about the moment her father proposed.

How her first instinct—as always—had been to call Regina and ask her what she should say.

Now, she says, “Killian proposed,” and Regina’s face doesn’t change at all.

She just stands there.

Stares.

And Emma wants to apologize, but she’s not even really sure what she’d be saying she’s sorry for.

She’s not even sure if she’d mean it, but she thinks she would and that’s not promising, is it?

To feel the need to apologize to someone for marrying someone else?

And it’s not as if her and Regina are big on talking about feelings in the first place. Or acknowledging them.

They’ve been here before, just on the precipice of broaching the subject of _them_ and why it bothers Emma so much when Robin puts his big hands on Regina’s small ones. Why Regina stares after Killian like she’d enjoy it very much if she could perform a much more violent version of _Stop Hitting Yourself_ with his hook-hand.

They don’t talk about all these moments. They let them remain _almost’s_ because it’s easier to ignore than it is to actually hash things out.

Emma wants to tell Regina this, but that would sort of negate the point.

And, anyway, she doesn’t get the chance.

Robin Hood is too busy ruining the moment—Emma standing so close to Regina with hands slightly outstretched to pull her forward and frosting on her pants—with that damn arrow he shoots at Emma’s head.

.

Fortunately, Emma ducks.

Or, actually, Regina shoves her roughly back into the side of her bug and Emma slides to the pavement quickly enough that the arrow lands ineffectually in her front hedges.

“Are you alright?” Regina asks, kneeling over Emma with wild, fearful eyes.

“I’m fine,” Emma says, and she wants to say something cool like, _But he won’t be when I get done with him,_ but Regina is already rounding on their assailant.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she roars, thundering up the streets towards him. “You could have killed her!”

You’d hardly think this was the clone of her supposed-soulmate with the way she’s about to _eviscerate him in broad daylight._

“I must say, love, you aren’t great at deciphering the point of these things,” Robin says and Emma narrows her eyes at the way he says _love_.

At the way he says anything.

At the way he’s breathing.

Fuck Robin Hood.

“You meant to almost kill her?” Regina asks and Emma can see the way her hands are twitching, as if longing to pull up a fireball and aim it at Robin’s stupid head.

She wonders if his hair gel is flammable.

“I’d think I’m in the right when my romantic interest has been thoroughly poached, wouldn’t you say?”

And, hardly. For lots of reasons.

Especially because—

“What are you talking about?” Regina asks and her hand lows and settles on her upper thigh (Emma’s definitely not tracking the movement, not at all). “Poached?”

“Oh, dear, no need to pretend. It’s spread across town. News of your shameful betrothal.”

And, _shit_.

Emma pushes herself to her feet, but Robin is still pointing another arrow at her and Regina is standing between them and she needs to _explain_ that this is all a mistake—a _Henry-_ mistake, at that!—but she doesn’t get the chance.

Because someone is shouting, “Oi! Queenie!” from up the street and—

Really? This is when Killian chooses to arrive?

Regina turns to look at him, as does Robin and, boy does he look angry.

Emma really needs to explain what’s happening.

He must have heard too.

“Wait, Killian!” she says and starts towards the impending skirmish, to where Regina is standing and watching looking more confused than ever.

“Wait nothing, love, I’ve got a bone to pick with, _her highness_ ,” and he’s still coming.

And she may be wearing his ring on her finger, but she hates him in this moment.

Especially, but not limited to, his particular choice in nickname.

“Emma, what’s going on?” Regina asks, sounding so soft behind Emma that she just wants to sink into the ground and _never_ have to return.

But instead, she’s stepping in front of the fist Killian is raising because _apparently_ he wants to punch a woman in the face.

And he does.

Boy, he does.

And it hurts.

Emma’s pretty sure later that she passes out immediately.

.

She wakes up to bickering and someone saying, “Now, now, children, fighting is what _got_ you here, and I will set this timer back to one hour anytime one of you says something that could be taken as _hurtful_.”

That’s definitely her mom, right?

The first time she opens her eyes is painful and she groans a little.

“Emma? Emma?” someone—Killian—asks, making her head throb painful at the proximity. “Are you awake?”

“Are you asking out of guilt or are you just curious if she’s up for another shiner?”

And _that’s_ Regina.

“As if I would _ever_ hurt her on purpose!”

“No, but that didn’t stop you from wanting to hit me for someone else’s mistake. Or need I remind you of that time just several months back when you attempted to damn her entire family for eternity.”

Definitely Regina.

And the sound of someone clucking their tongue. “And, we’re back on the first minute of your designated hour, kids.”

Her mother again.

Someone grumbles and then there’s silence.

Emma finally opens her eyes.

She’s lying on the couch in her living room, Regina sitting at the opposite end with Emma’s left hand in her right.

“Nice of you to join us,” Regina says, and it might sound cruel to anyone else, but it sounds worried to Emma and Emma smiles in spite of herself, wincing as her left eye crinkles.

Something cold moves atop her face and Regina says, “Try not to move. There’s a bag of peas there to keep the swelling down and, I’m afraid if it falls, we’re all a bit too tied up to adjust it.”

Emma finally is able to look around the room and frowns when she sees Robin on her right side, sitting on the floor and holding Emma’s right hand loosely in his. Killian is beside him, his hook held captive in Robin’s free hand and—

Yep. This is her mother’s doing.

Killian and Regina are holding hands as loosely as possible, dangling them daintily between where Killian is sitting on the floor and Regina’s hand is hanging between him and the couch, as if one of them is infectious.

Up by the TV, Snow is rocking Neal in her arms and holding an egg timer in her free hand.

“Not this again,” Emma mutters, and Snow has ears like a bat.

She looks up with a fierce glare already fixed on her face. “Yes, _this again. This_ until you four full-grown adults decide you’d like to act your real ages.” She gives a harsh look to Killian, and then says, “I’m looking at you. You’re nearly two-hundred and, let’s face it, I expect more at this point.”

Killian grumbles and looks away.

Emma looks from him to Regina and bumps the other woman with her foot, pressed a little too firmly into Regina’s thigh, and says, “Hour or half-hour?”

“We’re on our fifth false-start to the hour,” is the answer.

“Because you and Hook keep acting like babies,” someone says. It’s Henry, sitting smugly in the armchair across from the couch.

Regina shoots him a look, but seems to think over her response. “Darling,” she starts, eyeing Snow and her stopwatch warily. “Light of my life. Dearest son. Please, stop gloating. It’s terribly uncouth.”

Henry sticks his tongue out.

And, yeah. He’s definitely grounded for the next…

Possibly till college actually, Emma thinks with that stupid bag of peas on her face.

“Enough,” Snow cuts in, but she doesn’t start the timer over. “Now, if you four think you can behave yourselves, we’re going to go into the other room and give you a chance to discuss what it is that got you here. Remember, ‘ _I feel’_ statements are more helpful than _‘you’_ accusations. Healing only comes when the wounds begin to close.”

Emma makes a face and Regina catches her eye, smirking a little.

That makes no freaking sense.

Snow starts edging towards the doorway and Henry gets up to exit with her.

“Now, start talking. Open a dialogue. First topic: forgiveness.”

And then they’re alone.

.

There’s a lot of silence, mostly.

Regina shifting her thigh against the flat of Emma’s foot and Killian sniffling pitifully on the floor and trying to catch Emma’s eye.

She would look at him more fully, but that would involve sitting further up and doing _that_ would make the pea bag _he has_ deemed necessary fall off her head.

So much for celebrating her engagement. That’s all she wanted to do today. She’d woken up in her bed to find her fiancé already gone and had wanted to tell someone about it.

And now that same fiancé has punched her in the face.

“I don’t hear emotional revelations!” Snow shouts from the other room and Emma is pretty sure she can hear Henry snickering.

Yeah. She’s gonna kill him.

“Well, the sooner we please the Queen, the sooner we get out of here,” Robin says and it makes sense but Emma really wants to crush the bones of his hand in hers.

Apparently Regina and Killian feel the same way, based on the glare they send his way.

“I’ll go first then,” he mutters, and then says. “I feel that…I should have been informed about your engagement to the princess here—” He nods at Emma, but she’s watching the way Killian stiffens at this. “—before you went around kissing me in that mausoleum. Or dragging me to foreign lands, for that matter.”

And, ha! Emma knew he only followed Regina here to get in her pants.

Not that that’s great or anything. It’s not.

Part of her, when he’d shown up had wanted to be happy for Regina when she got this second chance offered up to her on an—admittedly initially ill-intentioned—platter. But she’d forgotten how much his voice grated her. And his actions. And just him in general, probably.

“You kissed him? In a mausoleum?” Emma asks.

And then she hears Snow shout, “Emma, baby, no ‘you’ statements!”

Regina is rolling her eyes again and, wow, if she does that again they might actually get stuck.

On the entertainment center by the TV is Neal’s baby monitor, which sort of explains the miraculous hearing her mom has acquired.

“Fine,” Emma grumbles. “I feel surprised that you kissed _him_ in a mausoleum?”

“What’s that, love?” Killian cuts in. “Trouble in paradise so soon?”

“ _I_ feel that it doesn’t matter _who_ I kiss or _where,_ for that matter, to you, Miss Swan. Don’t you have a wedding to plan?” Regina says, and there’s a particularly pained venom in her voice that makes Emma feel guilty by default.

“Yes, Emma. A wedding. With me,” Killian says.

“I’m quite aware of that, Killian. For future reference, on the day of the wedding, maybe don’t punch me in the face. Or disappear for an entire day. It might ruin our wedding pictures a little bit.”

“Emma…” Snow draws out her name really loud and long from the other room and Emma is practically seething that she’s the only one being called out right now.

Regina’s hand feels too warm and too soft in her right hand, palm pressed too harshly into the diamond of her engagement ring. Robin’s hand is slipping off of Killian’s hook.

“Guys, this is ridiculous,” she says finally. “Robin, I’m marrying Killian, not Regina. We’re not together and we never have been.”

She feels Regina’s hand shift a little in hers and she tries her best not to look, feeling even more guilty now than ever.

“Killian, I’m marrying _you._ Things just got…” The right word is confused, but she thinks of Regina again in the Wish-World, lips close and sweet puffs of air brushing against Emma’s chin. What she says is, “Confusing.” And then, “I’m pretty sure Henry paid people off to mess with me.”

From the other room, she hears that snicker again and resolves that the next punishment will be sitting silently in the living room with the TV off for the _entire LotR_ series, possibly _The Hobbit_ included.

“I’m sorry I got angry, Emma,” Killian says, even though he doesn’t mention the punching thing or anything. He just says it as if he’d had a right to be angry, even though it had gotten out of hand. “I just…I heard in the diner what supposedly had happened between—” He shifts his eyes between them and Regina shifts a little at the end of the couch, looking like she rather wants to drop his hand. “—and I…”

Emma can imagine that part. She can imagine Ruby bringing it up, perhaps just as a joke and then Killian—not privy to jokes—rising from the table to go and find Regina to teach her a lesson in stealing someone else’s toys.

She feels a little sick at the thought.

Regina shifts again. “It would have been nice to know I was getting married at the same time as my supposed fiancée,” she says and Killian looks a little less on edge for a second.

“And, Regina,” Emma says, finally looking at her. “I’m sorry my—” And, it’s funny. She’s been thinking the word ‘fiance’ in her head all day—at first in regards to Kilian and then, more recently, in regards to Regina herself—but she can’t get it out now. “—Killian tried to hit you. But, in all fairness, _I’m_ the one that got hit just seconds after your arm candy tried to take my head off.”

“I’m not certain you quite got the point of the arrow,” Robin cuts in, and Emma tilts her head—making the pea bag slide a little more—to give him a look.

“You shot it at me. What part did I miss?”

“I was simply trying to get your attention.”

“There are lots of ways to do that. Yelling, ‘Hey, Emma!’ is a start.”

“Well, you were looking rather snug with a woman I’d recently shared a rather passionate moment with.”

Emma nearly gags at his choice of words and even Regina looks a little sickened by either the descriptors or the reminder, which immediately makes Emma feel a little better about it. As confusing as that is.

Robin says, “If you make me feel like a lesser man, I’m afraid it’s my just duty to do the same to you!” Robin fires back. “Perhaps the next time I’ll simply use my fists like the captain here.”

More silence, but fortunately no scolding from Snow.

Then Regina sighs, sounding tired and exasperated from whatever the hell this day has become. “I’ll still have the Fall Out Boy reject’s other hand for that,” she says, but she squeezes Emma’s hand. “How is your head?” she asks.

And she breaks Snow’s rule.

Her hand pulls away from Killian’s and comes up to push the bag of peas away so that they slide down to the cushion below and her fingers stroke carefully down the bruised skin of Emma’s face.

“I’m alright,” Emma says. “Suffered worse.”

“So I’ve witnessed.”

Silence again, less awkward for Emma and perhaps much more awkward for literally everyone else in the room.

Except Regina.

Who looks suspiciously as though she’s having one of the most profound moments in their entire relationship. And she’s looking at Emma’s lips again.

“I think we’ve made a lot of progress here today,” is what interrupts them, coming from Snow who is standing in the doorway again with Neal still in her arms.

Fortunately, she hasn’t used that baby voice once since Emma woke up.

And then Snow looks at her son and says, “Isn’t that right?” high-pitched and obnoxious.

“I thought we had to stay here for an hour,” Robin says and no, they haven’t made much progress.

All they’ve done is succeed in making Emma even more confused.

“Killian, Robin, you’re dismissed,” Snow says. “I’d like to talk to my daughter, if that’s okay.”

Robin gets to his feet and brushes himself off. “Well, I wish I could say this was fun, but..”

He doesn’t even finish. He just shows himself out.

Killian does the same a moment later, throwing a wounded look at Emma on his way out and muttering things about Evil Queen’s and cuckholding and, “I bloody _live_ here. Kick _me_ out,” as the door closes.

And then it’s just Regina and Emma and Snow.

And two of them are still holding hands.

.

“I think the two of you need to talk,” Snow says when the front door closes.

She hasn’t brought Henry in with her and she’s dropped that dumb voice and it’s probably the most serious she’s looked since Emma saw her last.

It’s also possibly the longest she’s been awake consecutively since she started needing to take turns with David.

“About what?” Emma asks, feigning naiveté, and Snow’s eyes flash white anger that makes Emma sit up in surprise and fear. “Okay,” she says, though she doesn’t know the real answer still. “We’ll talk.”

She gives her daughter and former step-mother weird a look that conveys just how much business she really means and then nods at the baby monitor to remind them that she’ll be listening.

They’re still holding hands.

Snow slinks out the room slowly.

“So,” Emma starts, but doesn’t get past that.

Regina looks at her and stops fiddling with the engagement ring on Emma’s finger. “So,” she repeats, drawing the word out as Emma had.

“I’m sorry for what happened?” Emma tries, and thinks she hears a sigh from her mother in the other room.

“You said that already,” Regina tells her, looking skeptical.

“I know, but now I’m being held hostage until I, apparently, say the magic phrase that will let my mother let me go.”

“You’re an adult, Emma,” Regina reminds her. “As am I. We can leave anytime we want to.”

And, wow. Huh. It’s like Emma forgot that.

Why is she letting her mother dictate her life like this? Why had she held Gold’s slimy hand in the diner for an hour and said, _Sorry,_ when she didn’t mean it? Why had Gold let her?

Why did Robin go along with it? He’s not even from this world! There’s less reason for him to cater to Snow than the rest of them.

And then she remembers that Snow had been Queen in his realm. She’d been princess. He’d probably thought he _couldn’t_ leave. Even though that makes no sense because he’d literally _just_ shot an arrow at the princess’s head.

“I never thought of that,” Emma admits and Regina smiles a bit. But then, “So why are you still here?”

And Regina makes this face that reminds Emma of the time she’d been in this really short play about the creation of the world in, like, 2nd Grade, and she’d to sing a line about being an atom and had just sort of frozen on stage, staring out at all those parents’ expectant faces.

And then she’d puked.

Regina doesn’t puke, but she does say, “I don’t know, Emma,” and they’re still holding hands.

Emma says, “I’m sorry,” like she’s wanted to all afternoon, but not in the context of the arrow or the punch or Killian’s misplaced anger.

Regina seems to pick up on that. “For what?” she asks, but Emma knows that she knows what she means right now, in this moment.

She’s talking about Graham, sneaking out of that window and the twisting burning heat she’d felt at the thought of him sleeping with Regina, even then. She’s talking about the wraith and that fear at actually _losing_ Regina that had made her jump into that stupid portal. She’s talking about the trigger and _Let me die as Regina,_ and then kissing Killian in Neverland and the way Regina’s eyes had scrunched up in something that looked like loss when she’d found out.

She’s talking about the town line and all those memories and then coming back and nearly leaving again. She’s talking about the darkness she’d thrown herself into to save Regina’s happiness and the months after when she’d known from Regina’s eyes how much it hurt her to see Emma like that and how Emma hadn’t cared anyway. She’s talking about the Underworld and Robin and then _Killian_ and she’s talking about the Evil Queen and Robin again.

But mostly, she’s talking about sitting here on this couch with someone else’s ring on her finger.

What she says is, “I don’t know. I just know that I am.”

Regina is silent for a long moment and then she says, “Emma, have you thought about why today bothered you so much?” And Emma opens her mouth to say something, but Regina cuts her off. “I’m not talking about your injury—” Careful, chilled fingers trail down Emma’s bruised face once more. “—or the cake or any of that. Why do you need everyone you pass to know that it’s Killian you’re marrying?”

It’s the closest Regina has gotten in a long time to questioning Emma’s life choices.

Not since, _To be honest, you’re too good for Hook,_ in that Underworld diner and Emma needs to stop thinking about that in the first place.

She wants to say that it’s because she’s happy. That she wants people to have some sort of hope to hold onto now that Gideon is in town looking for a way to kill her. That she’s happy with Killian and she wants people to know that she’s happy. Finally.

She tries to say that, but Regina just stays quiet.

She doesn’t look at Emma when she says, “Are you trying to convince others that you’re happy, or are you trying to convince yourself?”

It sounds almost hopeful, as if Regina had wanted Emma to kiss her in the Wish-Realm too and she’s realized, with this engagement, that they’ve both lost their chance.

“Did you mean what you said?” Emma asks, and Regina finally looks at her. “When we were talking in the other world. You don’t think you’ll get married again?”

She tries to imagine this new Robin in a tuxedo and it looks wrong in her head, but she’s pretty sure Regina would be beautiful in anything—especially white.

“I don’t know, Emma,” Regina says and she lets go of Emma’s hand and starts to pull away, starts to get to her feet. “I think there are all sorts of exceptions to things you don’t see yourself doing if you find the right person.”

There’s this brief dramatic pause as they look at each other—Emma using her good eye to really _look_ —and it’s the part where dramatic music should play, zooming in on their soft, realization-addled faces.

Then Regina swoops out of the room like the Queen she was born to be.

.

To her credit, Snow gives her about five minutes of alone time before she comes in and hugs the living bejesus out of her.

“Are you okay?” she asks and somewhere behind where Emma is sitting, the bag of peas has begun to numb her butt.

“I’m fine, Mom,” she says and she means it, but sometimes it’s nice to just be hugged by your mom—even if your mom is also holding your brother and smells a lot like mashed pear/zucchini/corn she keeps feeding Neal for lunch every day.

Neal is excited to see her join the hug. He slaps her injured eye happily in greeting, but it’s Emma who gets scolded when she says, _“Shit_.”

.

“Five bucks each,” Henry tells her when she asks a little later, smirking a bit. “Worth every penny.”

She thinks of the crowded diner and everyone smiling so happily and frowns. “So no more allowance,” she says, but Henry doesn’t really think she means business until she sits him in front of the TV that night and confiscates his phone.

“Two-hundred-and-fifty-one minutes,” she says, holding up her _Return of the King_ DVD and Henry groans with his head rolling on the back of the couch. “You’re watching the extended version tonight, kid!”

But all he really watches is the clock on the wall and Emma, sitting in the armchair and turned so he can’t see the laptop, crying—and subsequently _wincing_ with her left eye—pretty much every time Aragorn and Arwen are in the same scene.

He doesn’t tell her why her mother went along with it, nor why everyone in the town seemed so happy. Emma doesn’t ask. She doesn’t want to know, she decides.

At least, not yet.

.

Killian doesn’t come home that night and she thinks of him sitting somewhere else, probably drinking. How he’ll come home tasting like rum.

She thinks of the moments before he’d gotten home the other night, when she’d been certain she needed to say no but wasn’t sure how.

She thinks of Henry, probably trying to tell her something in his weird, convoluted _Henry_ -ese like he always does, because pranks that elaborate are never random.

Mostly, she thinks of Regina and the storm of emotion that had crossed her face when she’d said, _You’re getting married?_ just seconds before that arrow and _Robin_.

But she’s thinking of herself, of how the only time she could ever picture walking down the aisle—in a beautiful church, stained-glass windows, her mother crying in the front row—was when she imagined Regina standing at the other end.

And maybe that’s really complicated and something that will take a while to get through, but nothing ever seemed as complicated as when she started to picture Killian at the end of the aisle, too.

It takes maybe a week, but she leaves the ring back in the chest where she found it.

And dammit if she doesn’t find the rest of her Thin Mints hidden under a bundle of mossy rope after all.

..

_later_

..

“Try to actually share this one, will you?” Granny says and Emma only half means it when she says, “Yeah, sure,” and carries the whole thing out of the diner and up the street.

She was supposed to be picking up lunch, but, hey—a  whole chocolate cake counts, right?

That is, they can eat it.

Her mom is stumbling up the front walk to the diner with David and Neal running ahead of them on happy, fat legs that David is trying to grab as he yells something about the _tickle monster_.

Emma rolls her eyes. How cliché.

“Emma, sweetie!” Snow says, and then her eyes widen when she sees the cake. “Is that…?”

She’d heard about the other one, a year or so before—or, rather, _washed it_ out of Emma’s clothes.

But everyone lately has been trying to avoid that topic—and Killian altogether, actually, because something about her wearing someone else’s ring now makes that awkward.

She’ll concede. It _is_ awkward. At least in theory.

To her, it’s been the easiest thing in the world.

“Yeah, Granny made it without being asked,” Emma explains and she rolls her eyes as if to ask if her mother can believe it, but Granny making special orders isn’t exactly news.

And, damnmit. Snow is gonna cry again, just like she did two nights ago when the news had been shared over dinner—those embarrassing, gasping sobs as she pulled her only daughter into her arms and said, _Emma!_ very loud and _very_ wet.

“Mom, no, come on,” Emma says and then she feels her dad at her side, pressing a kiss into her hair as her brother grabs for her curls saying, “Em, Em, Em,” on repeat.

“She’s just excited, honey,” David tells her. It’s a far cry from the confusion over the end of her _last_ engagement, but they’ve had a lot of mandatory hand-holding sessions since then. “Let her have this.”

So Emma does. She even lets Snow cry into the red leather covering her shoulder for much longer than she should.

.

“That’s not the salad I asked for,” is the first thing Regina says in person all day, as Emma comes stumbling into her office with the whole damn cake.

“This is better!” Emma tries.

“ _This_ is empty calories,” Regina corrects. “Possibly one million of them.”

She’s in a teasing mood. That usually means she’s happy, so Emma lets it slide. After all, she’d _hope_ Regina’s happy.

Regina gets two kisses in greeting—one on the lips, and the other pressed into the matching engagement ring on her left hand. Emma’s never been more glad than she is in that moment that she’d talked her mother down from surrendering her own engagement ring for Emma to propose with. Because… _weird_.

“You’re such a sap,” she says, but there’s no note of warning in it.

Emma kisses her again.

The cake doesn’t say _Congratulations, Emma and Regina!_ like the last one did.

Henry must have gotten ahold of the strawberries somehow because, instead, it says, _You Guys Are Stupid._

They save him a couple of slices anyway.

…

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me on tumblr at housewithoutwindows (or here, if you'd rather)
> 
> multiple vague references to 30 Rock because it's just the best. also Borderlands, Weekend at Bernie's, Lord of the Rings, and possibly other things i forgot.
> 
> mistakes are mine or my beta (you're slacking, Jen, come on).


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